Typically, I avoid political articles since the country is so divided now.
Years ago, I indulged in printing a series about the potential change that might come under a new administration in 2020. I archived those articles but go back from time to time to see how accurate they were. Being completely transparent, they were spot on. I will freely admit that I see things through a certain lens. I can’t imagine that any honest person could admit anything less of themselves. The direction the country went for four long years was not exactly what I wanted to happen, but the facts are the facts,
Now I see things happening that are concerning.
As a person who lived through the Cold War from the time he was born, I have studied the core philosophies of what was formerly known as the Soviet Union. The Marxist Leninist way of seeing the world was not pure in any way shape or form. In retrospect, the Rule of Lenin and later Stalin created its own privileged class of tyrants that probably did more to oppress the masses than any other system in mankind’s history. The millions of peasants that died from starvation in the early nineteen hundreds was hidden for generations. The industrial nature of the carnage stands as a clear testament to the failures of socialism on the grandest scale.
I have mentioned before a book that clearly catalogued the suffering called “The Russian Job – How America Saved the Soviet Union from Ruin” by Douglas Smith. The book was written by someone with a very different viewpoint than my own but showed the suffering of a large swath of people subjugated under a ruthless form of collectivism and socialism. It took the actions of the United States government to slow the starvation and retool the Soviet empire to keep it from happening again.
So, I was fascinated to look at the existence of socialism in America a hundred years ago and compare it to what is happening today.
From the Badger Institute April 30, 2026: “Socialists’ Milwaukee golden age and the light it sheds now.”
“Socialism is having a politically effervescent moment: From a self-professed socialist winning New York’s mayoralty to leftist members of Wisconsin’s Legislature forming a “Socialist caucus” for the first time since 1931, the soft-core version of Marxism is gaining prominence.”
Because America is made up of a large blend of immigrants along with people who are native born, it should not come as a surprise to anyone that socialism and even communism would find fertile ground. Large groups of people came here to work in the mills, mines, farms and other labor-intensive endeavors. The Midwest would see their fair share of people coming from the very same countries where socialism was first codified. Wisconsin would see many of those newcomers.
The Milwaukee Leader was a prominent socialist daily newspaper founded in 1911 by Victor L. Berger, serving as a key voice for the labor and socialist movements in the United States.
In the 1920s, reaching nearly 49,000 subscribers between 1922 and 1929
It was one of the longest-lasting and most widely circulated English-language socialist dailies in the United States. The following are three editorial page articles pertaining to May Day in 1926 and the report about the national socialist convention in Pittsburgh PA during that same time period.
The Milwaukee leader (Milwaukee, Wis.), May 2, 1926, (Morning Edition)
MAY DAY, 1926
Today and tonight there will be May Day celebrations in all parts of the world, for this is the international Labor Day. In European countries the Socialists and the unionists will celebrate. In those countries the unionists are Socialists as a matter of course. In the United States the Socialists and some of the more advanced unions will celebrate. In this country, most of the unionists are in a backward condition but are gradually making progress.
Greetings from the workers of each country to the workers of all countries are sent today, if not by cable and radio, then by the mental and spiritual wireless which the Socialists of all lands understand.
Someday all the nations will be socialized and there will be a world organization of socialized nations. If the present league of nations does not peter out before that time, there is a possibility that it might develop into the kind of a world organization the Socialists want, after the Socialists gain control of various countries and thereby gain control of the league. Karl Kautsky pointed out this possibility a year or two ago.
(Note: Kautsky’s orthodox Marxism advocated a gradualist, evolutionary approach to socialism. He argued that a socialist revolution was inevitable but could not be forced prematurely. The role of a socialist party was to organize the working class, win political reforms, and improve workers’ lives through the institutions of bourgeois parliamentary democracy, until material conditions were ripe for the transition to socialism. This “centrist” stance, positioned between reformism and revolutionary radicalism, drew him into major conflicts.)
May day is typical of spring, and spring is the time of seeding, planting, sprouting, budding and blossoming. The advanced workers of the world are sowing the seed that is to grow into a harvest of better social conditions. It is fitting that May Day should be their particular day.
When Marx and Engels said the workers of the world had nothing to lose but their chains, it probably was true, and it may be true in some places yet. But it is no longer true of most of the European countries, nor of Australasia, Canada, Mexico, or the United States. The seed sown in the days of Marx and Engels has already to some extent grown into a harvest of better things.
In our own country there is still a vast amount to be done by way of betterment. Sometimes it seems as if we were only getting started. Yet the fact is that we have done so much, and gained so many concessions, that today the workers of America are better off than they have ever been before.
Naturally we Socialists rejoice in this fact, for we have worked strenuously to bring it about.
However, we only survey the past long enough to take stock and to gain the enthusiasm that comes from the consciousness of things already accomplished. Then we turn our faces to the future and set about the further accomplishments that are to come. We shall keep right on educating the masses and wringing further concessions from capitalism, until finally the capitalistic system of industry will have been merged into Socialism.
Pittsburgh would also be a fertile place for spreading socialism.
The harsh conditions of the mills and mines in the surrounding communities would certainly cause many to seek beliefs and ideologies that could level the playing field.
SOCIALIST NATIONAL CONVENTION
The Socialist party of America holds a national convention in each even numbered year. May Day is a good time to hold it. This year’s convention begins today and will last five days. It takes place on the roof garden of Hotel Chatham in Pittsburgh.
The party is more than a party. If it were only a party, how could it put in five days in a convention at a time when there is no presidential election to be held? What would the Republican party or the Democratic party do under such circumstances? It would not take them more than a few hours to tell all they know, and they would have to put in the rest of the time guzzling moonshine, or worse.
Being more than a party, the Socialist convention will not only have the duty of preparing for the congressional elections next fall, but it will also busy itself with its more general duty of educating the masses of the people of America to a real knowledge of Socialism.
The party has been and is a wonderful force for good in this country. It has furnished most of the enthusiasm and most of the brains for the whole labor movement, and it has been the main cause of the securing of the concessions from capitalism which have made the workers of America better off today than they have ever been before. This is a proud record.
The good wishes of all the Socialists of the United States are with the comrades in Pittsburgh this day, wishing them wisdom and success in their deliberations and their planning for the future.
So how well was Marxism and Leninism Actually Working?
By 1926, the struggles of the Soviet Union were well documented in the main press. In the great famine of 1921-22, nearly thirty-six million people faced starvation because of a combination of drought and failed collective farming techniques. The actual death toll will never be known since the Soviets went to great lengths to hide their abject failures. It was only by the actions of the Americans that more were not lost.
Yet proponents of Marx and Lenin would cling stubbornly to their beliefs.
MARX, MARXISM AND BUNKISM
One of the saddest farces of old party journalism crops up from time to time in the editorial columns of the Milwaukee capitalist press. Editors who have never read a page of Marx write editorials, in which they discourse superciliously of Marx, Marxism and Leninism, blissfully ignorant of the fact that they are giving a vivid demonstration of the peculiar American vice of Bunkism.
In every other field of human thought, it is taken as a matter of course that one must have studied the subject before he is qualified to tell others about it. On the field of Marxism and Leninism, every blatant fool considers himself licensed to talk at large and to present his readers with the stale husks of his empty guesses.
The editor of the Milwaukee morning paper tells his readers: Any radical who says that Ford’s program of high wages, low prices and mass production vindicates Marx’s theories, ignores the right of a capitalist to a superior reward for services. The Bolsheviks tried Marx’s theories in Russia, and failed, because they couldn’t get along without capitalists. And so forth in the style beloved by all Marx baiters.
The editor shows by such remarks that he has never studied Marx and couldn’t tell at a moment’s notice what the gist of his work is. We wouldn’t mind discussing the real Marx with him, if he knew anything about him. Any ABC pupil in the Milwaukee Socialist movement can stump the old party editor on that point. Someday, when we shall have a strong Socialist party
in the United States, this old party sport of killing an imaginary Marx will be as dead as it has become in Europe.
The growth of Socialism has improved the level of old party journalism over there. Main Street journalism still can enjoy its Marx picnics for a little while, because it has an ample supply of uninformed readers.
So here we are in 2026, and the same old dead horses are being flogged by the socialists of the day.
The billionaires are the convenient boogie men of the day. All of your problems would be solved if we just taxed them into the poor house. Nothing has really changed. The only difference now is that we have a generation being raised on the internet. Sound bites have replaced sound reasoning. Hard work is being replaced by collective outrage.
The rise of figures like Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani, both self-described democratic socialists, has helped normalize socialist ideas in mainstream U.S. politics. Sanders’ campaigns and Mamdani’s mayoral victory illustrate how economic inequality, student debt, and housing costs are influencing voter preferences, particularly among younger and progressive Democrats.
These trends suggest that socialism is increasingly seen as a viable alternative to address economic challenges, while debates continue over its impact on broader electoral appeal.
College Students and Young Adults
A recent poll by Axios and The Generation Lab surveyed 1,574 college students nationwide and found that 67% of students held a positive or neutral opinion of socialism, while only 40% felt similarly about capitalism. Negative views of capitalism outweighed negative views of socialism (53% vs. 23%), and one-third of students had a neutral view of socialism. The survey highlighted that economic concerns such as high inflation, healthcare costs, housing affordability, and student debt are major factors driving young people toward socialism. Issues like healthcare and education were also cited as key motivators for political engagement among students.
The extreme outcome for these views is how many people celebrated the murder of a drug company executive in something vaguely referred to as social justice. A poll found 41 percent of adults under 30 consider the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson acceptable. Just as telling is the silence of too many public officials about the murder.
As someone who was raised during the Cold War, it was easy to focus on our mission. The existence of a place like the United States was a clear indication that freedom and opportunities were undeniable attributes of a better society.
Now, however as we continue the slide towards what is demonstrably a failed system, I fear for the country I love.
I do not fear for myself. As I approach my next birthday, I am content that my time will not be much longer.
theleansubmariner 